what are you doing man well the pizza box wouldn't fit in my little job site fridge i bring to the job site so now it'll fit you got pizza in there of course little cardboard dust never hurt anybody nice hey gang i'm paula stutback welcome back to our channel jordan and i are back here on our main remodel project and i'm actually standing in what is going to be the future master bathroom shower now the old shower here that thing was a bunker in fact it was built so well i had to go buy a
brand new bosch demolition hammer don't you hate it when you have to go buy a bosch tool right just to take that thing apart but it was a beast it worked fantastic if you're interested in seeing that video we'll put a link right here in our previous video on this project we put up our triton backer board covered it with schluter all set thinset and covered all that with our schluter kerdi waterproofing membrane then we got down here on the floor use the schluter curb cut it down to the height we wanted mitered it in
the corner and put it on the cement again with some schluter all set thinset so that's all ready to go so now it's ready for the pre-slope so in this video we're going to show you how to get a perfectly slow professional looking pre-slope plus we have a trick up our sleeve that is super diy friendly and we can't wait to show it to you let's get started so what is a pre-slope well the pre-slope establishes the slope of your shower floor towards your drain you wouldn't want to make this flat right then your shower
is not going to drain properly it has to slope towards our center drain and there are several ways to do that there are pre-manufactured foam pans schluter makes one we've used them we love them but they have a couple limitations the main one is your subfloor whether it's a concrete slab like this one or a wood subfloor has to be perfectly flat and smooth and flat is the key just check out this slab for example way over here in this corner i'm at 1 7 16 to my laser and in this corner i'm at just
over in 5 8 so i'm almost a quarter inch out so if i put that foam pan on a slab that's tilted it's not going to drain properly is it one side's going to be high the other side is going to be low the solution to that problem is to pour self-leveling underlayment in here spend a lot of time to get it perfectly smooth and flat let it dry overnight come back the next day then set your pan set your drain your kerdi collar and your waterproofing around the perimeter and you're ready to tile that
next day the method we're going to use for our pre-slope is a method that we call here in the south a dry pack what's a dry pack well it's basically deck mud it's sand and cement it comes in a bag and it's available at the home centers or your tile distributor you mix it up with a little bit of water not too wet and you can form it just like you were building sand castles when you were a kid at the beach now obviously on a concrete slab here but what if we were on a
raised foundation second floor and you had a plywood subfloor you wouldn't want to put your deck mud directly on the wood it's going to suck all the moisture out of your dry pack it's not going to be strong so what we recommend is a decoupling membrane you could use ditra to slew the product you could even use kerdi if you wanted to but if you wanted to save some bucks just pick up some cheap tar paper you're going to lay it down staple it to your plywood so it doesn't curl up on you then you're
going to try to find some stucco lath now i had a hard time finding this where we live we have six home centers here only one of them had this but they had 600 sheets you're going to put that on top of your tarp paper again staple it down so it doesn't curl on you and then your deck mud goes right on top that makes it very strong on a wooden subfloor concrete we don't need it and this wire and toilet paper is exactly the method we used on my mom's curbless shower i know a
lot of you are having questions about that in fact these are remnants from that project and it made for a super strong subfloor on her shower but before we head outside mix up our deck mud and throw it down we have to know how high it's going to be all around the perimeter so let's show you how we figure that out all right i'm going to start with a level because most people have a level now funny thing about this one i've used it a lot for this and these end caps always get in my
way because the cap is beveled and i can't get a mark on the bottom of the level because the end cap but i was like you goofball just take them off i'm gonna throw those in the trash because i need this square edge more than i need the protection for the end of the level i'm careful with my tools right we're gonna put the level on our drain which we set level already i'm gonna reach under with my marker and mark on the bottom of the level onto my curve can you get that jordan yep
all right now that mark is level with my curve but remember we don't want it level our pan needs to be higher but at least this gives us a starting point right so how much higher than this mark do we need to have our pre-slope well industry standard is a quarter inch per foot so if the wall of your shower was four feet away from your drain pretty big shower you'd have an inch of fall a quarter inch per foot at four feet one inch now on this shower it's pretty small about three feet square
now this dimension is about a foot and a half but if we take this long dimension in the diagonal which some people do right because the water's traveling there also we're at two feet so why don't we give ourselves half an inch of rise so we're going to come at this mark make a mark half an inch above it and that is the top of our deck mud and it's going to slope from there all the way to our drain and it's going to be level all the way around the perimeter on all four sides
so that our wall tiles look perfect well how are we going to get the pre-slope level all the way around all right that's a great question let's come on inside the curb now remember this mark right here is the one we established level with the drain and this one half an inch higher is going to be the top of our pre-slope now we need to extend it all the way around right now you could try to get the level in here and try to look under there like that and get a pen and mark it
but you can already see how difficult that's going to be now i have my laser right here now check this out we can use the laser to move that line around and check it out that bosch laser fits right inside the schluter drain those are both german companies coincidence i think not now you can see my laser line right there i can simply trace it all the way around on the perimeter but we're not even going to use that method the one we're going to use is the one we mentioned at the beginning of the
video it's kind of our secret sauce for this video so we're going to go outside get all the components ready and show you what we're talking about [Music] [Applause] [Music] alrighty guys there it is this is your secret weapon to get that perfect insulation on your pre-slope what the heck are they well they are foam screeds they're going to go around the perimeter and establish the perimeter height of your pre-slope how do we make them well we simply measured each wall of our shower wrote that down cut these to length of course with the stud
pack miter and yes we even beveled the top as indicated by the arrow that's my top so how do we get our height well remember that mark we made down here on the curb we just measured from there to the slab deducted about an eighth or a quarter because we knew our slab was out it's going to vary on your job but now i say let's put them in we were actually going to glue them but i think these inside miters are going to fit so tight maybe one screw in the middle that's all we
need let's slide them in check it out all right we're going to put this piece in and we're going to split the laser beam half the laser beam is going to be down here and the other part is going to be up on our curve just like that that's what i'm looking for all right let me go grab some screws and we'll screw this one off and we'll do the rest alrighty guys i changed my plan i am going to throw some glue on there we threw some screws in it it's just not strong enough
for me we're going to be putting quite a bit of down pressure on this as we screed i don't want it to move because if it moves that ruins the whole plan right so quick audible we'll put some liquid nails on there screw it in we'll be good to go [Music] all right [Music] there we go very cool this screed right here is what's going to make you look like you've been doing this your whole life and you're going to get a perfect pre-slope from the outside perimeter of your shower all the way to the
drain no matter the shape of your shower or the location of your drain now a few words about this material that we used for our screed remember we used the off cut from our curb and whatever you use here needs to be compatible with your waterproofing system so a piece of wood is probably not your best option you could probably even use a piece of the triton backer board that we used on our walls when we cut a line on it and snapped it it was dead straight but remember on this we actually beveled it
just because we could you're not going to be able to bevel a piece of backer board so enough said about that i think it's time to head outside mix up our deck mud then all we got to do come in here dump it in and screw it off let's head outside and do some mixing all right gang here's our product we're using for our deck mud it's by laticrete they're number 209 floor mud it's for use on interior applications so couldn't use it outside right for mortar beds leveling beds and shower pan fill and slope
which is exactly what we're using it for now this is not a self-leveling underlayment and it's not a grout like you would pack under a piece of heavy machinery very specific product so let's bust it open start mixing up some mud [Music] yeah that ain't working dude there's so little water in here which is what you want we're just gonna dump it in the wheelbarrow and use a hoe i'm a what all right gang dry pack is all mixed up but before we dump it in here we're gonna give this a drink of water so
it doesn't soak all the water out of our dry pack material [Music] all right now we're ready to dump our dry pack in [Music] all right we're getting close now it is really just a matter of connecting this point with this point all the way around now you'll notice i filled in my gap under the drain with the thinset i had over from yesterday but here's a little tip for you if you don't have thinset and you still need to fill that in when you're doing your dry pack stage dump some here in the corner
put some water in it mix it up right on your shower floor so it's a little bit looser that way you can work it under there and it'll flow under the drain into all those areas then go right on top of it with this stuff it's a good tip and it'll save you some time but right now i just have an old grout float i'm using to move the material and to lightly pack it down now when i say lightly it's like this that's all you need that's that's too hard i can't tool that very
well but i can tool this a lot easier see that so i'm just going to start shoving this into the corners and under the drain and leveling it out and you can already see how easy this is going to be [Music] [Music] all right again you got to this point and your dry pack is going to look something like this i usually work a quarter to a third at a time whatever i can reach that way i can put my hand here without making a mess now how are you going to make it look perfect
well the pros have a tool for that right they have aluminum screeds all that kind of stuff if you're doing this at your house save your money all you need to do is get a straight piece of plywood rip it straight on your saw or with a circular saw with a guide and that straight edge is going to be all you need to do one shower on this particular one we have two links one about 18 it'll get us from here all the way out to this corner and the same on the other side so
we have a little bit longer one to reach over here what you don't want to do is go too long and have it ride on this opposite flange you see now we have a gap here you want it from the screed to this edge of the flange all the way around so i'm going to grab my grout float and i'm just i'm going to start removing my dry pack from around the edges and you can see how easily that works remember just like when you were a kid at the beach clean up that corner and
now i'm ready for my plywood so when you use your plywood you don't have a lot of room here to move this back and forth like you were screeding concrete so i just use a slight scraping motion i'm going to straight towards the camera so you can see it and you can already tell that i'm uncovering the drain and i'm flush over here at the screen then i give it a few taps and look what a beautiful job that does i'm not done yet but that's the idea so let's finish this whole area and then
we'll keep going to the next area [Music] all right now on previous shower pans that we've done like this not the screed but a mud base we've actually put a layer of thinset here with a notched trowel again to hydrate the cement but more importantly to bond our dry pack to our concrete because this is not going to adhere to this this is too dry to form a bond with the concrete it'll be a little bit but not like thinset would but after we did that video somebody commented and said you know what you don't
really need to do that because back in the day when we had a vinyl liner there was no bond at all but the dry pack was just sitting in the vinyl as one hunk and that's absolutely true so this isn't going anywhere either and so that's why we're not doing thin set but if it makes you feel better go ahead and put some thinset down it'll be fine you'll probably have extra of course always have extra [Music] so [Music] alrighty guys that is looking stunning i am so happy with how this is turning out and
all we have left to do is this little corner right here we thought this would be a great time to pause in the action and show you how we do a thumbnail as you can see we pull the rag out of here obviously the rags keeping our drain clear of debris right we pulled out the vacuum picked up all the loose particles and we cut a nice edge in right here so you can see the slope of our pre-slope but like i said gang this is going so fast and this is so easy anybody can
do this but if you don't have the means to cut phone back aboard or you can't get phone back aboard you can do this in the traditional method isaac ostern has a bunch of great videos on how to do this in the traditional method plus a bunch of other great stuff make sure you check him out but for right now let's dump the rest in here and finish our pre-slope [Music] it's like [Music] okay [Music] sunday night [Music] [Music] stop messing with it huh [Music] and we are done look how great that looks guys that
looks like it came out of a factory now a few tips i learned along the way if you're using a plywood screed or wood street or probably even aluminum one get a blade and keep that edge clean if the dry pack builds up on there you won't get a nice straight smooth edge the other thing you're going to notice this is a little bit rough like 40 grit sandpaper right but it's fine you're going to want some tooth on there because we're going to put some more thinset on this with a layer of kerdi to
completely waterproof this whole thing and we're going to water test it but if you want it a little smoother you could certainly take a steel trowel go over it and you're going to be fine it's already getting pretty hard over here now after watching this video gang you should have 100 confidence in yourself that you can do a shower pan like this but if you don't or you don't have the time check out something called a shower receptor that's what we call it in the united states it's a pre-formed shower pan usually fiberglass with an
acrylic coating just like a fiberglass bathtub and a lot of times they're made out of a faux stone the drain's already set it has a flange you basically set it on the floor and you can tile your walls the same day we used one recently nearby on that emergency bathroom project we did we set the pan in the morning did the walls in the afternoon and they were ready to shower that evening so check out a shower receptor if you've never seen one alrighty gang that is a wrap on this video we are absolutely stoked
about this process and we sure hope it helps some of you out there get your shower completed so you know what you need to do for us right get some foam make a perfect bordered bevel frame around your like button slope it in so it drains well smash it for us that helps jordan i the most ask us a question drop us a comment how do you do it and subscribe if you haven't already and we'll see you on our next video [Music] cool man nice
